Studio City Patch, a local news website, accompanied us as we conducted an investigation at the Radford Underpass, on 8/30/11. It is located on Radford Ave under the Ventura Freeway in Studio City, CA. Studio City Patch ran this news article last year of a man, named Russell, who was found dead in a trunk of a burning car, apparently he may gave died of a drug overdose and was found in the trunk burned to death. Mysteriously, the cause of death has not been determined a homicide.

More than a dozen neighbors have made calls to police around midnight reporting seeing a shadow type figure around seven feet tall underneath the underpass. Making rattling noises and then vanishing, the shadow figure is seen around the same location of where the burning car with the body was discovered. Claims have been made that the shadow figure is connected to the death of the man found dead in the trunk.

Studio City Patch was the only news outlet to cover this story of the burning car and no one has ever been charged with the crime or has come forward to claim the body. Mysterious votive mourning candles are contentiously placed and lit at the burn site throughout the year and no one has ever seen the people who place these candles.

We arrived at the Radford underpass around 10:30pm, it was a year to the day that Russell was discovered in the burning car, police reports say that the crime was committed in the early morning of the 31st, between midnight and 3am. We did an initial walk though of the underpass and discovered what looked to be old candle wax drippings by the burned out area on concrete where the car was discovered. No candles were present and even though it was late in the evening, vehicles still passed loudly at a steady pace.

Jason and Marcus tried experimenting to recreate the tall shadow figure that has been reported by a dozen witnesses. They thought the light sources could be car lights reflecting off of the walls of the underpass causing moving shadows as the car approaches. Marcus drove his car up and down the street while Jason walked the underpass, after about 20 minutes of trying to disprove and recreate the shadows; they were unsuccessful, however they did recreate a tall shadow about 50 feet high that moved opposite of the cars’ movement. Although, this was seen as clearly a shadow and did not exhibit a noise or a physical body.

Clare set up the the night vision cameras. One was mounted on a tripod to be pointed at the wall of the underpass where the shadow had been reported and the other would be hand-held. Marcus and Jason proceeded to get a baseline reading to find if there were any abnormal spikes of EMF before they investigated the area. EMF spikes were found in the center of the bridge, whereas no other area seemed to contain any at all.

As midnight came close, a digital recorder and EMF pump were placed by Clare where candle wax drippings were. We all took a seat at the end of the underpass, far from the the burn site, and sat still while listening and observing. Jason used the bionic ear and headphones connected to a digital recorder for a possible amplified sound or voices. Clare and I sat quietly in the middle of the intersection as Mike from the Studio City Patch sat on the curb of the street. We sat still watching for any shadows or loud noises.

We noticed however that being under a bridge, and having vehicles pass on top we would have sound contamination on all of our recording devices. 20 minutes passed as we had not seen or heard anything that appeared to be paranormal or unexplainable, so we decided to conduct an EVP session at the burning car site. We all took turns asking questions pertaining to what we learned about what happened at that location a year ago.

Below are our findings from that EVP session:

“Not me” (3.5s) This EVP was captured after Marcus was shuffling his feet. Note: The EVP has been amplified, not modified. The EVP is Class B

The EVP session lasted about 30 minutes.

Note: While conducting this session, we were sitting in a half circle and half way into the session a very strong smell of burning rubbing was smelled from everyone in the group. The smell quickly dissipated. What make that unique, is that we were positioned in the middle of the bridge. No other odors were smelled before or after that.

(.05s) “Mike” – This EVP is thought to say “Mike”. Mike is the name of the journalist from Studio City Patch that investigated with us that night.

Note: During this session we heard falling rocks behind us, but could not determine the source. It was possible that they were just lose stone falling as cars passed on top. Mike did report feeling a cold spot around him and Jason documented that the temperature changed by 5 degrees, by using the MEL Meter.

After the “Spirit Box” session, we conducted a short burst EVP session for 15 minutes, but we did not capture any EVP’s

After about 4 hours of investigation, we did not see any strange shadows or banging noises that could not be explained. Loud cars and trucks passed over head all night and contaminated our audio. We did capture the word “Mike” repeated a few times on the “Spirit Box” and a very faint EVP. Was Russell trying to communicate with Mike or was it just coincidence?

Russell’s birthday was on Aug 30 and died the day after.

Here is the what Mike from the Studio City Patch wrote about his experiences that night.